The above is the short version of the weather forecast for my location, on this 5th day of May. Currently the forecast is erroneous, as there is no fog, not even a hint of fog, just a clear blue cloud-less sky.
That gusty thunderstorm prediction for this afternoon sounds interesting.
Last night's predicted storm sort of arrived as predicted, sometime between 7 and 8. Rain, distant thunder, a little wind.
By 8 I was ready to watch Young Sheldon and Ghosts, which I had recorded during their scheduled airing time between 7 and 8.
A little after 8, with a big bowl of popcorn, I started up Young Sheldon. It was being amusing, and then a loud honk would interrupt the dialogue, followed by a screen crawl informing the viewers which areas were experiencing some storm action.
The honking interruption happened three or four times. It is quite annoying, what with the fact that the honking is so not needed. That and I was watching something I had recorded, hence the weather warning was irrelevant, as that time of extreme supposed weather danger had passed.
And then it got worse. About half way through Young Sheldon, the KAUZ weatherman, Ken Johnson, with his hands in his pockets, for who knows what reason, broke into Young Sheldon to go live with the important info that Doppler radar had detected a rotating cell, with tornado potential, east of Wichita Falls, near the little bump in the road, along Highway 287, called Bellevue.
Ken Johnson went on and on, breathlessly showing maps showing the possible severe storm action.
And then we switched to live footage of storm trackers trying to track the illusive storm which was so possibly dangerous that interrupting regular programming was warranted.
I hit the fast forward button. On and on it went, cutting back to Ken Johnson, excitedly pointing out the tornado potential.
Soon fast forwarding went past Young Sheldon to Ghosts. And still we were live with the imaginary weather drama. Halfway through Ghosts being interrupted I had had enough and went to watch something else I had recorded.
In our current era of easily being able to record TV, of streaming, of multiple sources of TV input, is it not extremely stupid for a local station to go live, interrupting its programming because weather conditions might turn into something dangerous at some location in their viewing area?
If you are at home watching TV, you are likely aware of the storm potential. You can read the warnings on the screen. Why is there a need to go live with this type thing?
It is likely at the point in time where the local CBS station went live with all this storm information that most local viewers were not watching network TV, but were watching something streaming, on Amazon Prime, or Netflix, or ROKU, or HULU. Or something pre-recorded.
And this Ken Johnson guy is one of the worst of this type newsman I have ever seen. I remember one time, a couple years ago, he breathlessly went on air, because a rotating cell had been detected north of the local airport. He had a sandwich in hand, he could not get oriented to the screen. It was both highly amusing, and embarrassing.
This Ken Johnson guy is the Ted Baxter of local TV weathermen.
And now, this morning, I went to the KAUZ website to see if there was any news about last night's supposedly dangerous storm. KAUZ is the call letters for the local CBS station.
There was nary a mention, not one, made about last night's weak storm, which somehow warranted interrupting programming.
I had already made note of the fact that no mention was made of last night's storm in the local newspaper, the Wichita Falls Times News Record.
Now, I am certainly not suggesting that these storms are to be taken lightly. They do have deadly potential.
But, how does going live, like what happened last night on KAUZ, make any sense at all?
Doing such would make sense only if somehow there was a means to instantly break into anything being aired on any TV in the potentially affected area. Rather than just issue the dire live warning to the small percentage tuned into KAUZ.
It is so perplexing...
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